This one image should be issued as a ceremonial postage stamp to commemorate one year of Modi’s rule. We have said it many times already, but here it is, once more, with feeling – this is a bloody, violent Hindutvavaadi regime, with a cool headed, coldly vicious master-mind at its head – he of the Swarovski eye glasses, the 10 Lakh Rupee Suit, the diamond Movado watch – he of the infinite silences on All That Matters.

But the key strategy is to foment communal violence around the time of elections, a strategy that failed the BJP in Delhi, but it’s just the way they are trained – the BJP, its baap the RSS and the sundry Hindutvavaadi outfits that run around beating up lovers and women (of all religions) and attacking minorities. They just keep on going, hoping achhi hogi (ab ki baar) fasal matdaan ki.

A reminder follows of some things I have written about earlier on Kafila. But since they keep reproducing their mythology, I guess we will have to keep repeating our counter arguments.

One – there was a spate of ‘communal violence’ in Uttar Pradesh after the Lok Sabha results of May 2014,60 percent of which were near by-poll seats. A ninth of all communal incidents since May 16, 2014 have been Dalits versus Muslims, of which 70 percent were near by-poll seats! This was revealed in an outstanding series of investigative reports by Appu Esthose Suresh in The Indian Express.

Two major issues were identified by Suresh as triggering violence:

a) Loudspeakers. Groups and political parties have transformed loudspeakers at places of worship into powerful instruments of communal polarisation, leading to clashes between Hindus and Muslims. In as many as 120 of the 600 odd communal incidents, the trigger for violence was seen to lie in a clash involving the use of loudspeakers. In many cases as we know, even when the issue is amicably resolved by the local groups, Hindutvavaadi outfits descend on the scene to ensure that no resolution endures.

b) Elopements. Consider just one example – In Village Gaineridan, Police Station Jahanabad, on May 20th, a Muslim family took away by force their daughter, who had married a Jatav boy. Local BJP leaders demanded security for the Hindu family and the return of the Muslim girl to her husband, leading to tensions.

Brass noted two particularly important roles – that of ‘fire tenders’ who keep embers of communal violence alive by bringing to the notice of authorities, police and the public, situations known to be ‘sensitive’ – genuine or bogus; and that of ‘conversion specialists’ whose job is to convert incidents with riot potential by inciting crowds, or by signalling already planted people to start the violent action.

And now finally, let us look at how those headlines on Ballabhgarh should have read in the first place:

NB (from a note I added on Signs and Promises, May 29, 2014) - Mr Baliyan now says he wants people to talk to him 'about sugar or farmers' issues, rather than harp on riots. I want to leave the riots behind, and want peace to return to Muzaffarnagar," (In late March, his co-accused, BJP MP Hukum Singh, of Kairana, said he would not allow Muzzafarnagar riot refugees to vote). This is a tried and tested method of manipulating public mentality - selective memory combined with contempt for law and justice. Why should we forget, Mr Baliyan? Mr Modi hasn't forgotten, so why should we? A political movement which wants us to always remember 1528 (the date of Babar's alleged destruction of the Ram Temple) - keeps asking us to forget 2002. (No one even asks us to forget 2008, because it is forgotten anyway, who bothers about Kandhamal? Or for that matter the frighteningStaines judgement, (2011) which 'forgot' that two little boys were also burned alive along with their father, Graham Staines in 1998?) Now Mr Baliyan wants us to forget 2013. But what does all this mean? Should the FIR vanish? Should the trial be dragged on for decades, like the Babri Masjid demolition case? Should the police forget about the case, as the J&K police have avoided pursuing hundreds of cases of murder of Kashmiri civilians by persons known to have participated in terrorist actions? Or maybe Mr Baliyan is signalling that the police leave out crucial evidence, as they are believed to have done in Zakia Jafris petition? Should men accused of inciting violence and communal hatred be outside the purview of law and justice because they want us to forget what they did? Should the surviving victims of the 1984 carnage also forget about justice? Why have a justice system at all?

Prime Minister Modi's elevation of Baliyan is a signal to all of us who believe in justice and the constitution - it is up to us (including Mr Baliyan) to decipher what kind of signal it is. I'm sure the message has been received, loud and clear. There is a long tradition in India, of elected representatives presiding over violence so massive that even the most efficient crime prevention system would collapse under the weight of criminality - and then asking everyone to forget, move on, not harp on the past. There is an FIR registered against Mr Modi as well, on the orders of the Election Commission. He poured ridicule on the Commission, and the fate of the investigation is anyone's guess, now that he is Prime Minister. Yes, the signs are clear. Some people are above the law, and some kind of crimes must not be cognised as crimes at all. They are part of the never-ending cycle of communal revenge that our country has endured for many decades. We are a world-class power where genocide has been a common place. The Gujarat government hasreinstated suspended police officer G.L. Singhal, who was charge-sheeted in the Ishrat Jahan extra judical killings, and was the Investigating Officer who falsely implicated, tortured and framed 6 innocent Muslim men in the Akshardham case. The Supreme Court recently severely castigated the Gujarat police on this count. Even before the election results,the chief supervisory officer investigating the cases was relieved of the charge: See Sleuth probing Gujarat encounters shifted, probe hitWe can see that justice is a top priority for Mr Modi - but what kind of priority? The constitution, to which both Mr Modi and Mr Baliyan and Ms Anandiben have sworn allegiance, still contains a criminal justice system. They may all want us to forget Muzaffarnagar, encounter killings etc, but the justice system is not bound by their wishes Judges and officials are servants of the constitution, not of the government of the day. Let us see whether they stand by their oath. DS

NB: Whether or not we agree with Professor Kancha Ilaiah, he has every right to engage in critical inquiry about religion. If it hurts anyone's sentiments, it is just too bad. They have to learn that many of us are equally perturbed about the atmosphere of intimidation and intolerance that has been created by people more interested in power than in God. Respect for religion is one thing, but we are not all obliged to be religious, or to refrain from voicing our doubts about religion. Our constitution allows space for critical inquiry, and if it did not, it would be useless as the statute of a democratic polity. This case should be fought and we should voice our support for Professor Ilaiah's right to publish and debate his ideas. People who don't like them are free to publish their criticisms and even condemnations. It is certainly not a matter for the police. What should be a matter of concern for them however, is the very long tax holiday enjoyed by this NGO, which enjoys the status of being a charitable organisation, and which has been brushed under the carpet for decades. The VP Singh government could do nothing about this scandal, as it depended on the BJP for support. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/furore-over-tax-summons-to-vishwa-hindu-parishad/1/315030.html

The GoI may be requested to collect arrears, since this regime is desirous of financial stringency - DS

The Hyderabad police have registered a case against renowned
social scientist Kancha Ilaiah, after Vishwa Hindu Parishad activists
complained that an opinion piece he wrote in the Telugu newspaper Andhra
Jyothi had hurt their religious sentiments. They filed their complaint at Hyderabad’s Sultan Bazar Station was filed on May
9, the day Ilaiah’s article titled Devudu Prajasamya Vada Kada? (Is
God a democrat?) was published.

VHP activists Pagudakula Balaswamy, Thirupathi Naik and two others accused
Ilaiah of comparing Hinduism with Islam and Christianity, insulting Hindu Gods
by comparing them to mortals, mocking their worship, and for attempting to
trigger clashes between upper and lower classes (by which they presumably meant
castes).

On the basis of their complaint, Inspector P. Shiva Shankar Rao wrote a letter
to the Senior Assistant Public Prosecutor, who advised the police to register a
case under Section 153 (A) and Section 295 (A), which empower the authorities
to act against people who commit deliberate and malicious acts aiming at
outraging religious sentiment and spreading enmity between groups.

Case under investigation: The public prosecutor’s legal opinion led to a case being filed on May 15
against Ilaiah, the management of the Andhra Jyothi newspaper,
its editor and publisher. The case is currently under investigation, at the
completion of which a decision will be taken to whether to chargesheet them.

A police officer at the station told Scroll that Ilaiah is in
the habit of articulating provocative views in his articles, which can and do
hurt the sentiments of people. “Why does he have to make comments against
practices which are dear to people?” the officer said, declining to give his
name. The central thesis of the article is that a society’s social and political
structures are profoundly influenced by its conception of God and by its
religious beliefs.

Three conceptions of God: Ilaiah delineates three types of Gods: an Abstract God, one who is shapeless
and eternal; individuals who were prophets but were transformed into Gods; and
Gods imagined as humans. Each category conveys certain ideas through their
attributes, Ilaiah claims.

The Abstract God has democratic qualities, he contended. The first of these
characteristics, as expressed in the Bible and the Koran, is that God “has
created all human beings equal”. The second democratic character of this kind
of God is that humans are created superior to all animals (including the cow),
and “nature and its creatures have been created for food and other human
purposes”.

Both Jesus Christ and Prophet Mohammad propounded these ideas, he said.
However, in contrast to the Prophet Mohammad, Christ acquired the status of
God, as did Gautam Buddha, he writes. “Buddha and Jesus are against violence,”
he wrote. “Their teaching inspired hopes for equality across the whole human
race. Both their life stories have extended discussions on societal
construction, change in man-woman relationships, desired forms of rule and
democratic values.”

However, Ilaiah rates Jesus Christ ahead of Buddha in espousing democratic
ideals. “His fight for the freedom of Samaritans (Dalits over there), women,
Gentile men and women, slaves and prostitutes, seem to be one step ahead of the
Buddha’s democratic values,” he claimed. “He is the one who clearly
stated about the necessity of separating state and religion.”

Separating religion and state: The social scientist wrote that Christ’s teachings have helped Christian
countries to evolve democratic principles. By contrast, despite the great
emphasis in the Koran on the equality of all humans, there was no separation of
religion and state during the life of Prophet Mohammad and during the reign of
the four Caliphs. This may be why dictatorships have dominated Muslim
countries, which have feeble democratic traditions, Ilaiah suggested.

Next, Ilaiah turns to the third category – God as imagined as humans. Though
this type of Gods is found around the world, he says it is only in India they
are divided into two entities: “Vishnu and his clan of incarnations” and “Shiva
and the divine powers created around him”. The Saiva school’s impact on
contemporary India was limited, he writes. It did not really create
social-political principles. By contrast, institutions and political parties in
India have declared “spiritual and political allegiance to Vaishnavism and its
Gods”.

Ilaiah, therefore, suggests that it is more important to study the impact of
Vaishnavism on Indian society. The narratives and imagery around Rama and
Krishna, who are incarnations of Vishnu, involved violence and weaponry such as
the chakram, bow and arrow and the trishul (trident), he writes.
This has a bearing on human relations, he contends.

Caste identities: Ilaiah also alleges that these narratives contain what he calls the
“counter-democratic process”. The fact that these Gods have identities rooted
in the Kshatriya caste “has greatly helped in building an undemocratic system”,
he wrote.

The article ends with a few questions: “If the God believed by a person doesn’t
have democratic values, where will this person get those democratic values
from? In fact, shouldn’t they explain why they create such Gods who are
violent, undemocratic and anti-women?” Ilaiah told Scroll that he was not perturbed by the case. “I
am into transforming thought,” he said. “Such pressure is expected. I am not
scared. My motive is to make the nation rethink its uncivilised conduct.”

Statement of support: He is not without his supporters. On May 27, Andhra Jyothi
carried a statement by 76 Telugu writers, intellectuals and artists
backing Ilaiah. The statement said, “Prof. Kancha Ilaiah wrote an article by
describing the democratic values and showing how negative spiritual values come
in the way of development of national economic, social and political future.”

His supporters urged his opponents to counter his arguments in articles of
their own. “Instead, in order to control Prof. Ilaiah’s ideas, some forces are
resorting to legal and coercive methods, which cannot be supported by anybody,”
the statement said. The statement concludes, “Today, Kancha Ilaiah’s writings are making the world
think afresh. Only the communal bigots are unable to understand those ideas.”

Twenty-five years ago this month, 5,000 Iranian political
prisoners were executed on the direct orders of the then-Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini. Their crime? They were feminists, communists, socialists, students,
Kurds, Baha’is, Ahwazi Arabs, Azeris and Baloch; all arrested for distributing
leaflets and organizing protests against the Mullahs who had stolen the 1979
revolution against the autocratic monarchy of The Shah.

It was the summer of 1988. The exhausting eight-year long
Iran-Iraq War was staggering to a close. With the UN distracted in drawing up a
post-war ceasefire, Khomeini decided to wipe out the existence of any
opposition. He issued a fatwa to execute all political prisoners who refused to
accept his rule. After 10-minute mock trials, the condemned were the hung on
cranes or shot by firing squads, with their bodies dumped in unmarked mass
graves.

If Khomeini thought his crime would pass unnoticed in the
fog of war, he was wrong. A quarter of a century later, the massacre conducted
in the name of Islam and the Islamic Republic is still reverberating around the
world. On Wednesday, the Iranian massacre of 1988 will bring
Canada’s government and opposition MPs together to make common cause with the people
of Iran who still suffer under the brutal dictatorship of the Ayatollahs.

Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, an international human rights
lawyer, will be joined at a press conference by Paul Dewar of the NDP and the
Conservative Party’s James Bezan. They will present a motion to the Commons
condemning the mass murder of political prisoners in Iran in the summer of 1988
and label it as a “crime against humanity.” In addition, the motion will call
to establish September 1 as a day of solidarity with political prisoners in
Iran.

Behind this initiative is the “Massacre88 Campaign.” Their
spokesman is Kaveh Shahrooz, a Toronto lawyer who lost his uncle Mehrdad in
that massacre. Writing in the Ottawa Citizen last week, Shahrooz said: “As a child, I’d sometimes visit him in prison and recall
the signs of gruesome torture on his body. The authorities stopped our prison
visits in the summer of 1988. After two months without news of him, my
grandmother was called to the prison to collect Mehrdad’s few belongings ... my
family has never truly recovered from that loss. My grandmother and mother have
both passed away since then, both with the unfulfilled wish of seeing justice
in Mehrdad’s case.”

Shahrooz is not alone. Millions of Iranians fled the
country. Some came as refugees to Canada and still carry those scars. Mehdi Kouhistani of the Canadian Labour Congress remembers
his childhood friend Sadiq Riyahi, who, along with his brother, was hanged in
1988. “I miss my friend even today. He died a brave man. They say he was spared
from those condemned to die, but when he saw his brother in the line-up of men
being led to the firing squad, he leapt to his brother’s side and gave up his
life in solidarity.”

Yet, there are those among us “Canadians” who last Sunday
celebrated and honoured the mass murderer Ayatollah Khomeni at the Islamic
Society of York Region, waving pictures of the horrid man Iranians label as
their Hitler. Imagine an event in Canada to honour Augusto Pinochet or Pol Pot?
Would anyone dare even attempt to do so? As these pro-Khomeni Canadians went into the Mosque to
celebrate the mass murderer, about 100 Iranian Canadians and their supporters
picketed them, chanting slogans against Khomeini and the Islamic Republic.
There were white and black, Jew and Muslim, Kurd and Baloch, all representing
Canada’s true spirit

In late July 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran began
summarily interrogating, torturing and executing thousands of political
prisoners throughout the country. The massacre continued into the fall.
Wellplanned and deliberately accomplished in secret, the massacre effectively
eliminated any remaining political opposition to then-Supreme Leader Ayatollah
Khomeini’s regime. Although the exact number of victims is not known, thousands
of prisoners were tortured and executed over the course of only a few months.The victims included prisoners who had served their
sentences but had refused to recant their political beliefs, prisoners who were
serving sentences of imprisonment, people who had been detained for lengthy
periods but had not been convicted, and former prisoners who were rearrested.
Many had been arrested when they were teenagers for commission of low-level
offenses such as distribution of pamphlets. The political views of the victims
stretched from support for the Mojahedin-e Khalq (Mojahedin), a Marxist-
Islamic Party that had engaged in violence in an effort to overthrow Khomeini,
to support for the Tudeh Party, a secular Marxist party that until 1983,
supported the regime.

This was not the first time the Islamic Republic had
executed thousands of its political opponents or even the first time the regime
had executed its opponents en masse. However, the 1988
massacre stands out for the systematic way in which it was planned and carried
out, the short time period in which it took place throughout the country, the
arbitrary method used to determine victims, the sheer number of victims, and
the fact that the regime took extensive measures to keep the executions secret
and continues to deny that they took place. The executions began pursuant to a fatwa issued by Ayatollah
Khomeini immediately following Iran’s announcement that it had agreed to a
cease-fire in the devastating eight-year Iran-Iraq war. The fatwa created
three-man commissions to determine who should be executed. The commissions,
known by prisoners as Death Commissions, questioned prisoners about their
political and religious beliefs, and depending on the answers, determined who
should be executed and/or tortured. The questioning was brief, not public,
there were no appeals, and prisoners were executed the same day or soon
thereafter. Many who were not executed immediately were tortured.

The Iranian government has never identified those who were
secretly executed and tortured, and has never issued an official explanation
for why political prisoners of different beliefs, many of whom had been
imprisoned for years, were suddenly executed in the summer of 1988. By that
time, most of the Mojahedin leaders had left the country or been killed, and
the majority of the Mojahedin prisoners were from the lower ranks. Tudeh and
other leftist parties had basically ceased to exist in Iran. Many of those
executed had been convicted of relatively minor offenses—the more serious
offenders had been executed in prior purges. The regime knew that the massacre was a violation of
international and Iranian law, and that news of the executions would severely
damage its reputation. Therefore, it made every effort to keep the
interrogations and executions secret… read on:

Let's try and take the bull by the horns at the risk of
being gored. Here, as far as one can gather, is the narrative so far.

A study circle of students at IIT Madras reads B.R. Ambedkar's classic 'The
Annihilation of Caste' and distributes pamphlets that reportedly 'spread
hatred' by condemning not just the caste system but all of Hinduism. An
anonymous letter to this effect is sent to the HRD Ministry which forwards the
complaint to the IIT authorities. IIT Madras then responds by stating that the
students have broken an agreed-upon rule that forbids them to use the name of
the institution to "garner support or publicize their activities".
Finally, the political parties enter the ring like brave matadors - some
defending freedom of speech on behalf of the students, and others condemning
the apparently wholesale castigation of Hinduism by these same students.

Under these piquant circumstances, how do we interpret that basic 'right to
freedom of expression', ironically guaranteed under a Constitution whose chief
architect was B.R. Ambedkar himself? In order to address this conundrum, I
would like to first turn to a story attributed to a very great champion of
Hinduism indeed - Swami Vivekananda.

Vivekananda is said to have prayed fervently at a shrine to the goddess Bhavani
in Srinagar. His devotion so pleased Bhavani that she appeared before him and
Vivekananda at once agitatedly related to her the desecration of her temple by
past 'invaders'. He would never have tolerated such an insult, he tells her; he
would have laid down his life to protect her! To all of which the cool goddess
replies: "But what if this were indeed the case? What is it to you? Do you
protect me or do I protect you?"

Self-deprecating and humour-laden, the anecdote shows how Vivekananda's wise
analysis of narrow human enmities still holds lessons for our increasingly
cacophonous politics. Taking our cue from it, we might ask: Do our politicians
protect the Constitution or does it protect them? Surely, the latter as much as the former.

Extend this argument now to the students of the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle.
If the political right to protest is sacred, both inside and outside Parliament
where so many 'unacceptable' statements have been made of late, then so is the
individual right to dissent. And here, we must make a further key distinction,
especially relevant to university environments, between the concepts of
'protest' and 'dissent'.

Dissent is not to be confused with protest. We protest about particular issues
or events - say, price rise or a horrifying rape - but dissent is not
necessarily issue-based. Unlike protest, we can't just 'stop dissenting' in the
way we can cease to protest if and when we achieve our objectives. Dissent is
not so much protest as the mental foundation of protest; it represents the
idiom of anti-complacency and democratic self-voicing. That is why the idea of
dissent is key to university environments.

To return to Vivekananda's Goddess here for a moment, we could see her as a
potent metaphor for the concepts that a society holds dear - such as democracy
or justice or the 'right to dissent'. As this goddess smartly argues, she does
not belong by right to any of the sparring parties who appoint themselves her
guardians. 'Enshrined' or 'protected' by greater guarantees, she belongs to the
transcendent collective - to 'we, the people'.

It is here that the idea of 'the university', in its modern avatar, becomes
relevant. In its earliest usage in English, back in 1300, the Shorter Oxford
Dictionary informs us that a university indicated "the whole entire
number, a community regarded collectively... the whole body of teachers engaged
at a particular place, in giving and receiving instruction in the higher
branches of learning".

The noun 'Institute', as in the IITs, derives on the other hand from the Latin
verb for 'to establish' and has a relatively modern meaning. The first usage of
this word was in 1795 in a post-revolutionary France inspired by the ideals of
'liberty, fraternity and equality'. An 'Institute' is supposed to have a more
labour and skills-oriented approach to education and an emphasis on technical
specializations. According to the Shorter Oxford again, it designates "a
society or organization... to promote some literary, scientific, artistic or
educational object".

What is noteworthy about both the pre-modern idea of the 'University' and the
post-French Revolution notion of the 'Institute' is their collective
orientation and their commitment to learning communes where teachers and
students are equal partners in intellectual exploration.

A university is ideally a 'protected' place where ideas, however radical, can
be fearlessly presented and debated. In this sense, dissent can be seen as an
attitude of mind allied to the 'right' to be sceptical and to sharply question.
As a teacher, the classroom is my 'sacred space'. My personal opinion is that
no question can, in principle, be rejected in such a space. The query or
hypothesis a student presents may be wildly off, yet it must be dealt with, as
far as possible, through sustained reason and cooperative argument.

Our relentless examination systems and rickety infrastructure may, over the
years, have worn down our capacity to enrich this basic idea of 'universal'
questioning, but it must be recognized that the 'right' to dissent remains part
of the very architecture of a university.

So even if we grant that the students at IIT Madras violated some rules and
their privileges had to be 'temporarily withdrawn', a far more fundamental
principle seems at stake. That principle has been already articulated by IIT
Madras in no uncertain terms: "The Institute does not curtail freedom of
expression". Indeed, as a respected site of education, it cannot and must
not.

A colleague at IIT Madras makes three sensible points in this connection in an
email to me. One, he was out of town when all the brouhaha happened but, truth
to tell, he hadn't even heard of this study group until the recent newspaper
reports. Two, this controversy somehow reminds him of the quite different 'kiss-of-love'
campaign in November 2014 which spilled over into IIT Madras from
other campuses with protests outside the campus gates, as in the present case,
and then blew over. Three, his 'hunch' is that the incessant media attention
these days simply escalates tensions. Overall, his perspective, as an observer
at close quarters, is that dissent is such a 'generic' and integral part of campus-life
that it would probably pass unnoticed if the media wasn't hyper-ventilating.

To my mind, however, the implications could be larger. Some of the most
exciting academic debates in our country in the tumultuous 21st century are
likely to come from the struggles of large marginalized aggregates. Unless we
are prepared to take these forms of social dissent seriously in academia, the
rule-bound, top-down routines to which we have become so used to are bound to
be violently disrupted.

As Dalits, women, endangered language groups and others seek to insert their
perspectives, texts and theories and into the accepted public discourses and
academic canons, we will need to rapidly move outside our mental comfort zones.
And this process of 'empowerment' is already well underway. True, the IIT Madras flashpoint may soon be forgotten but its real significance
is that it is yet another wake-up call. Universities and institutes are natural
havens where our youth will meet to discuss the excitement, hopes and challenges
of the future. If we value that common future, we must protect their freedom to
read as they will, to learn, to think and to dissent.

Friday, May 29, 2015

NB - This is a beautiful and moving story. It provides
yet another example of human goodness, and reminds us how quick we are to pass it by, to
overlook it, because we are so accustomed to negativity, denunciation and
animosity. Beneath it (in the original) are scores of comments, most of which are deeply
appreciative both of the author, Akhtar Balouch as well
as the subject of his story, Daya Ram Gidumal. But some comments show how attached we are to negativity. One person says: Why this chap Akhtar Balouch
sole mission is propagating hindus of Sindh? quite evident from his writings
through out. Doesn't he have anything to say about the Muslim majority of
Sindh? Another says : I wonder if the Hindus and Sikhs of
Punjab and Haryana ever feel the sorrow of those millions of Musalmans who were
killed, raped and driven out from their homes in 1947? I have never read
anything like this from the other side of the border.To the latter I responded thus: "why assume the worst, my friend? Human goodness may be found across all lines of division. Here is a trailer for a beautiful film made by Ajay Bhardwaj: Rabba Hun Kee Kariye/Thus Departed Our Neighbours. See it and reconsider: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apYFzQCXYS0>I have had similar
reactions from Indians. About 2 years ago I posted something on FB on the great
humanist and philanthropist, Abdul Sattar Edhi. One person of
'parivar' persuasion instantly denounced him for caring only for Muslims, for
which he presented no evidence whatsoever. It was with some effort that I
persuaded him that Edhi sahib was devoted to the care of suffering humanity, regardless of their religious identity. We have lost the capacity, it seems, to read or understand anything about society without dipping it into communal animosity. I have analysed this habit here: The Philosophy of Number, but more than historical analysis, what is required above all is to remember that human goodness is not attached to any community or ethnic identity. If we allow good and evil, innocence and kindness to be communalised, we shall become zombies. If it touches any readers, the article posted here is a reminder that all of us know a good human being when we see him. Thank you, janab Akhtar, you have rendered a public service - Dilip

Born in 1857, Deewan Daya Ram Gidumal was among those
dedicated men and women who became an icon of service to their people. During
the days of the British Raj, Gidumal was known to be the ‘godfather’ of Sindhi
Hindus. A primary student in the days when the official language of Sindh
was Persian, and later having had the opportunity to study in an English school
since the age of 10, Daya Ram began planning on improving the education
facilities for the people of Sindh. His first idea was to build a higher
education institute.

For this, he took his brother Mitha Ram and his friend
Jethmal, both of them advocates, on board. Together, they laid the foundation
of the famous D.J. Science college in Karachi. They expanded their efforts and
built a college in Hyderabad as well – the National College. Daya Ram was not
only good at Persian, but was also a master at Gurmukhi and Arabic. He was a
judge by profession. His decision-making was appreciated throughout the law
community.

"Daya Ram was transferred from Ahmedabad to
Shikarpur in 1889. During his service as a judge there, a case was presented in
his court wherein a Hindu business owner, namely Seth Meval Das, had allegedly
raped a poor woman. Since it was the time of the British rule, the seth was
arrested immediately. When the Hindu community of Shikarpur came to know that
the case had gone to their Hindu brother judge’s court, they hoped the seth
would not be punished in order to save the Hindu community from being
disgraced. Daya Ram gave the criminal the maximum: seven years of imprisonment.
A big hue and cry followed."

Sindh has been known for its religious and mystic saints.
There are others who claim to be saints, but are merely frauds fooling the
innocent masses. They have been responsible for a number of cases in which
their followers, on orders of the unsaintly ones, have caused grievous harm to
themselves or their loved ones. One such case was admitted for proceedings
into Daya Ram’s court. Not even for a minute did Daya Ram consider the risks
involved in a Hindu judge passing the legal sentence in this case. Rashidi writes about the case:

"A man committed a murder and claimed it was
revealed unto him through God’s word that he should kill the man, and so he
did. The case, as soon as its proceedings began in Daya Ram’s court, caused a
lot of hue and cry. Daya Ram did not have any regard for the rant and rave. He
only understood the law. In his sentence, he wrote that if this man is let
loose, who knows how many others he will murder in the name of holy revelation.
There are thousands of such people across Sindh and they may also start killing
thousands only because they believe God has told them to do so. The man was
given life imprisonment. God’s revelations to kill people suddenly ceased in
the region."

Hindu-Muslim communal feuds over property, especially those
related to lands on which places of worship were built, were a common thing
even back then. Mostly, such cases were dragged by the benches or the
judges. The judges, hearing these cases, would often hesitate in making
any decisions. If a judge was Hindu, how could he favour the Muslims? And vice
versa. Daya Ram would not care about such affiliations. Once, there was a
land dispute case in Ahmedabad over a piece of land reserved for a mosque, that
had been pending decision for almost a decade. According to Ali Muhammad
Rashidi, when Daya Ram began heading the proceedings of this case, in a matter
of days, he decided it in favour of the Muslims.

The marriage that caused an outrage

Daya Ram retired from his services in 1911. Afterwards, he
moved to Bombay. He became a homeopath and started treating people for free. He
also established an ashram in Bombay, where children of the elite would learn
to serve the poor. The ashram existed for many years. All of the ashram
students would address Daya Ram as Pita Jee (meaning father).

Suddenly, one day, Daya Ram Gidumal announced that he was
closing down the place. Later, he got married to a young student from his
ashram. Many opposed his acts of shutting the ashram and marrying a girl
younger than him. Op-eds would appear against him in the newspapers. On
occasions, he was stoned and injured. He never reacted.

Deewan Singh Maftoon writes in his book Naaqaabil-e-Faraamosh on
pages 280, 281 and 289:

"Deewan sahib (Daya Ram) went to Bandra, which was
only a few miles away from Bombay. He rented a kothi (a house) near the shore.
He then returned to Bombay to his ashram. He told his students to gather around
and then told them that the ashram will close that very day.

"All girls and boys went home. Deewan sahib locked
the ashram. He then took the bride-to-be to a gurdwara and asked the granthi to
perform the marriage rites. The granthi married the 17-year-old girl and the
70-something man with a long, white beard. They both then went to the kothi in
Bandra."

Daya Ram was a famous man in India. He had also presided the
Indian Social Conference for many years. Editorials and articles published
against his marriage carried titles such as A Father Marries a Daughter, The
Height of Selfishness, The Immoral President of Social Conference, The
Disgraceful Act of Daya Ram Gidumal etc.

The hatred was not limited to the written word. Once, when
he had gone to Hyderabad, his birthplace, for the registry of his ancestral
property, people threw bricks and stones at him as he crossed the market.
People cursed him and cried out about how he had disgraced Hyderabad in the
world.

Virumal Jee was an old friend of Daya Ram’s. He had spent
more than two decades with him working for the welfare of the people of Sindh.
At the time of the outrage, he was the editor of Daily Sindhi,
which used to be published from Sukkur, Sindh. He was shocked when he heard of
this marriage and immediately wrote to Daya Ram:

"I am reading in the newspapers and hearing it from
people as well that you have married a young girl merely 17-18 years old.
You’re a renowned social leader and you preside the Social Conference. How can
you commit such a sin? If it is true, please write back to me and confirm.
Because, in that case, being a public worker and a journalist, I must write
against your monstrosity."

Daya Ram sent Virumal Jee a postcard that read: "I’ve done my duty. You do yours." Afterwards, Virumal, who also headed the Hindu Maha Sabha in
Sindh, published a number of articles against Daya Ram.

Months later, Daya Ram’s wife gave birth to a girl. Daya Ram
rarely interacted with the world after this marriage. He kept on living with
his wife and daughter in the quarter by the seashore at Bandra. Ten years
passed. Nobody came to know what exactly had happened.

That year, Daya Ram’s wife got ill. When, after a few
months, all hope of saving her life was lost, her parents came to Bombay to
visit their daughter. They spent a number of days with their daughter and her
family. One afternoon, the ailing young wife of the old man spoke her heart out
to her mother:

"Mother, I have a few more days in this world now.
There is a secret that I wish to share with you so that I may not depart from
here carrying its burden. Deewan sahib married me in order to save me from
being disgraced. I was pregnant with the child of another man who rejected me
soon after knowing that I was with his child. No one else was ready to accept
me after that. Deewan sahib sacrificed everything for me. In reality, we have
lived all these years as a father and daughter, just as it was before our
marriage. It is only for the world that I am his wife."

Soon after, she died. The mother shared the secret with her
husband, who shared it with friends. Sometime later, the secret was no more a
secret. One Mr Virumal Beghraj shared it with the editor of a newspaper, Riyasat.
Many in Bombay later confirmed the credibility of the news. Deewan sahib
withstood severe psychological pain and social pressure in order to save a
young girl from shame. He changed his religion and committed social suicide.
Had his daughter-wife not shared the secret, the world would never have known
the greatness of the man that was Deewan Daya Ram Gidumal.

"... is there available in our ordinary experience an icon of what Socrates means by the “vision” or “prophecy” of the good? I believe that there is—the good man. A good man, as we observe him within our daily lives, is not “useful for…” in the same sense that tools, food, acts, even just and beautiful things exhibit utility. Entirely apart from the happiness which may justly accrue to the good man because of his consciousness that he is good, there is a certain fulfillment, completion or perfection which shines forth from such a man, and which we too admire, even perhaps without envy or desire, because of its splendor..." Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay, 1969, p. 172

‘Lately, the paradoxical turns of recent Russian history…
have given my research more than scholarly relevance,’ remarks Oleg Khlevniuk
in his introduction. Indeed, in Putin’s Russia Stalin’s apologists and admirers
seem daily to become more vocal. The language of the 1930s is used in televised
tirades against ‘internal enemies’ and ‘foreign agents’. Stalin himself is
upheld not only as a strong leader, but also as an ‘effective manager’ who,
despite his mistakes, did what was necessary to modernise the Soviet Union; or,
contrarily, as a benevolent dictator who was unaware of the corrupt actions of
his officials.

In short, there could hardly be a more opportune moment for
the publication of this authoritative, fluently written, concise life, the
pinnacle of current scholarship on its subject. Khlevniuk, who has spent many
years working in the Russian archives, commented in an interview that his aim
was to produce ‘a narrative that rests entirely on what we know for certain
about Stalin and his time’. So he swiftly dispatches several myths about the
man. There is no evidence to suggest Stalin was an informer for the Tsarist
police before the Revolution, and none, either, that he ordered the murder of
Kirov in 1934; no record has emerged of him refusing a prisoner exchange for
his son Yakov during the war, and the most likely cause of his wife’s suicide
in 1932 was the combination of her mental fragility and his philandering.

What remains surpasses any fabricated horror. Terror was
Stalin’s first choice as a means of government and his early control of the
secret police was a key reason for his rise to power. Arbitrary torture and
murder, applied via campaigns against various largely fictitious ‘internal
enemies’, ‘fifth columnists’, ‘terrorists’ and so on, were used to subdue the
country, Stalin’s closest associates, and the security forces themselves. Under
Stalin’s aegis, over a million Soviet citizens each year were imprisoned,
tortured, executed and exiled; many more — at least 60 million, or a third of
the population — were affected by some type of repression.

Far from being unaware of his subordinates’ actions, Stalin
was a micro-manager, as determined to oversee every seed sown in his dacha
garden as every piece of fabricated evidence. In small details, as in large:
‘We do not know of a single decision of major consequence taken by anyone other
than Stalin,’ states Khlevniuk baldly. Quite an extraordinary statement, when
one considers the length and eventfulness of his regime.

The sociopathic cruelty of this approach was matched by its
incompetence in all other areas. Stalin appears to have been completely
ignorant of economics, believing that ‘class war’ and ‘revolutionary spirit’
were all that was needed to industrialise effectively. Fear and turmoil caused
by constant purges did not make for a productive workforce, particularly with
little or no financial incentive to work. Before the Revolution the Russian
economy was growing at one of the fastest rates in Europe. Yet in the
reasonably prosperous year of 1952 — after almost 30 years of Stalin’s
management — the Central Statistical Directorate made a study of the country’s
average daily nutrition. Free Soviet citizens, it discovered, were eating a
very similar diet to the inhabitants of the Gulag.

The living standards of the Soviet people were of little
concern to their Generalissimo. Khlevniuk argues convincingly that Stalin’s
prime obsession was not the advance of socialism, not the might of the USSR,
but overwhelmingly ‘the task of bolstering his personal power’. It is all the
more extraordinary, therefore, that when Stalin achieved his goal of
totalitarian power in 1929 it was only the beginning of the savagery.
Thereafter each of his bloody campaigns served a dual purpose — to terrorise
the people while dealing a pre-emptive strike against some perceived threat.
Millions died for him to score his miserable political victories within the
Politburo.

It is tempting to see his paranoid vengefulness as a
pathology, and Khlevniuk includes a report from one of his doctors that his
personality was affected by the hardened arteries in his brain. Nonetheless,
Khlevniuk also shows that Stalin’s first essay in terror came in 1918, long
before his illness. What’s more, one of his defining traits was his very lack
of mental instability: his iron self-control. Throughout his long life there is
no record of him ever hinting at what he knew to be true — that he had murdered
dozens of his close friends and family. In the absence of any evidence, I still suspect this
corrupt, vicious, lonely man understood the power of fear so well only because
he felt it himself so intensely. In Stalin’s library, Khlevniuk finds a
quotation that is attributed to Genghis Khan ominously underlined: ‘The
conqueror’s peace of mind requires the death of the conquered.’

The normality of the evening was deceptive. A little before
6 pm on May 25, most residents of Atali village in Ballabhgarh, in Haryana's
Faridabad district, were out tending to their cattle. A few were in their homes
cooking dinner. Zahida Parveen had just settled down on the second storey of
her home in preparation for the asar ki namaz. Suddenly, there was
a loud noise.

“I looked out and saw 14-15 men enter the gate of the house armed with bricks,
sticks and swords,” said Parveen, a slender woman in her early 20s. “I heard
them break the door to the ground floor of our house.” She bolted the door to
the second floor and hid in a room. The sounds of destruction continued
drifting from below, glass being smashed and things being hurled around. She
could hear the men rush up to where she was. “They were breaking down the
door," Parveen said. "I hid inside the bathroom. They entered my
room, shouting ‘Let these people die in the fire, if not at our hands.’”

Parveen doesn't remember how long she stayed hidden while mayhem played out on
the other side of the bathroom door. The men smashed a washbasin, overturned
furniture and set fire to three cars downstairs before eventually walking away.
Parveen and her relatives escaped from the roof when, after what seemed like
hours, the police arrived. Three days on, Parveen and her family were still living in fear at the
Ballabgarh police station along with 200 other Muslims from Atali.

Refugees in their town: At the police station, the Muslim men sat in groups on a lawn at the entrance,
in the blazing heat. Further inside, about a hundred women sat on a rug spread
on the asphalt, with a thin cloth tent sheltering them from the sun. Children,
many in the school uniforms they were wearing three days ago, huddled around
the women. In one corner, there were stacks of bananas and plastic pouches of
drinking water provided by social activists.

They all recounted the same tale: on Monday, a 300-strong mob of Jat men went
on the rampage in Atali, attacking Muslims and their property. At least 20 Muslims
were trapped in the assault, three of whom are still lying in BK Hospital with
burn injuries and cuts. Parveen’s sister-in-law Naeema fractured her left foot while trying to escape.
Sameena, a neighbour, suffered a big bruise on her arm. Others had injuries on
faces and backs from the stones pelted at them.

Nanho, 65, and Sama, 9, narrated how they hid under a cot to save themselves. “Eent
barsi thi – they were pelting bricks,” said Sama, dressed in her
school tunic. Nassi Begum added: “The Jats brought men from 12 villages to
attack us. Our girls had to run to save their honour and their lives.” Zahida’s mother-in-law Haseena Al alleged that she appealed to the policemen
present in the village to protect them from the mob but they refused. “I held
the policemen’s arm begging him to help my family, but they ignored our plea.”

Most families expressed anxiety about their unlocked houses
and their untended cattle back in the village. But they can’t go back. Clashes
have continued on the periphery of the village despite the deployment of
several police battalions, and the villagers fear for their lives. On Tuesday,
when officials suggested shifting them to the village school while their houses
were repaired, the villagers refused outright. “The Jat men are keeping a
watch, they will trap us inside the school and attack again,” said Ruksana.
“Two women went along with the men to the village yesterday in a bus
accompanied by the police. They saw the men still standing peering from the
roofs.”

Communal politics: At Atali, the scars of the Monday violence weren’t too hard to see. A mosque
that was being constructed in the centre of the village, next to a small temple
and the village pond, bore the scars of the attack – its scaffolding was
damaged and a stone plate bearing the name of the mosque had been blackened.

The villagers said the discord was grounded in the Jats’ opposition to the
construction of the mosque. A smaller Muslim shrine had stood on the spot.
“After the Mumbai riots in 1992-'93, a smaller structure at the same spot where
the Faqir Muslims use to pray was burned,” said Sher Singh, a farmer. “Then
later, the villagers had collected Rs 10,000 for its repair.”

Several villagers recounted that in 2010, when sarpanch elections were due, the
construction of a new mosque had become a point of contention between the Jat
and Faqir Muslim communities in Atali. Most villagers spoke of the 2010 events
in the context of the sarpanch elections due again in August. “The Muslims have
almost 400 votes,” said Sher Singh. “In the upcoming election, both candidates
know that this vote matters in a population of 3,000.” Both candidates in the approaching sarpanch election are Jat
– Rajesh Chaudhary and Pehlad Singh – the same as the last time. Villagers said
that though Pehlad Singh had supported the construction of the mosque in the
previous election, this year he was opposing it.

“Every five years, this issue is raked up to fool people,” said the local MLA
Tek Chand Sharma of the Bahujan Samaj Party. “This mosque has existed at least
30 years. It is there in all revenue records.” Sharma, the sole BSP MLA in the
90-member Haryana assembly, is allied with the Bharatiya Janata Party
government in the state.

In 2009, before the previous sarpanch elections, Jat and Pandit villagers filed
a case in the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s court for an order restraining the
construction of a larger mosque. The mosque’s pillars had been erected by then
but further construction was stopped. Later, when the court ruled against the
petitioners, a second petition was filed before the Sub Divisional Magistrate
questioning whether the land belonged to the panchayat or the Waqf Board. The
Sub Divisional Magistrate gave a decision this March identifying the land as
belonging to the Waqf Board.

A few weeks later, the dispute over the mosque intensified. On May 21, four days before the mob assault, 30 policemen were stationed at the
mosque site to allow the construction to begin. A day later, Deputy
Commissioner of Police Bhupinder Singh said he presided over a meeting of
villagers from both communities at the Ballabhgarh police station. At this
meeting, the current sarpanch, Rajesh Chaudhary, gave a statement to Muslim
villagers that the mosque construction could go on as permitted by the local
courts. But on May 25, as labourers began building the roof over the
scaffolding and policemen kept watch, the mob attacked.

Deeper divide: While a few Hindu villagers were injured in the stone-pelting on Monday, the
maximum damage was suffered by the half-built mosque and the 17 Muslim homes
around it. Inside these abandoned homes, many of which were unlocked, there was
still a smell of charred wood. In most of them, fridges and cupboards had been
ransacked and overturned, and the floors were littered with bricks, clothes and
children’s footwear. In some, half-cooked vegetables lay over the stove.

“The village gets cooking gas through a pipeline and the
attackers cut these pipes to ignite the homes on fire,” said DCP Bhupinder
Singh. A godown belonging to a Muslim family was set alight after the first
wave of attack, he said. The villagers named 20 youths from the village in the
First Information Report, but the police hadn’t arrested anyone.

While the Jat own the most land in the village, followed by Pandit and Saini
families, most Muslim households support themselves through cattle rearing.
Some Muslims own vehicles that they rent out and a few others work as drivers. In conversations with this reporter, most Hindu villagers were defensive. “Why
are you asking us?” snapped Yogesh Bhardawaj, a 20-something who works as a
gardener in Ballabhgarh. He advised, “Go ask the Muslims,” using a derogatory
term for Muslim men. Harish Yadav, a farmer, claimed that the Muslims “pelted stones at our women on
Monday. That is when we retaliated”. However, when asked to identify the women,
he could not name them.

The two Muslim households that were among the most well-off in the village
suffered the maximum losses – the families of Haji Sabir Ali, who own a pumps
business and works as a contractor with the Electricity Board, and his relative
Isaq Khan. The family’s property was completely damaged, with the mob setting
fire to several air conditioners Ali owned and three of his cars. “They were
Faqirs, they used to beg and starve,” said Harish Yadav. “Now, it seems they
have become contractors.”

The youth in the village as well as local BJP workers showed
a WhatsApp message circulating in the area since the previous day,
exhorting Hindus to gather in large numbers to fend off impending attacks
from Muslims. “Last night, I heard that 15 vehicles full of Muslims had arrived
in the village,” said Mahesh Saini, a farmer. “It has become impossible to
sleep.” Ten kilometres away, at the Ballabhgarh police station, the Muslim families
prepared for their third sleepless night outside their homes, as young men
began lining the asphalt road with chadars. “Why did they do this?”
asked Rahmati, an elderly farm worker. “Were we not Muslim 100 years back? What
has changed now?”